Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation - Filmmaker Magazine - Fall 2003 × close TOKYO STORY Anne Thompson muses on the loneliness of the long-distance filmmaker with Lost in Translation's Sofia Coppola, Scarlett Johansson and Ross Katz. Lost in Translation writer-director Sophia Coppola. Photo: Melodie McDaniel. Sofia Coppola knows from jet lag. And she knows Tokyo, quite well — she used to fly there once a year for Milkfed, her clothing design company. “Jet lag makes you contemplate life in a different way,” she says. “You’re far removed from all the distractions of your normal life.” Perched on a sofa in the lobby of the Chateau Marmont Hotel, she’s in navy blue (T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops) except for her toenails, which are baby pink. Between working her clothing line, shooting her music videos and promoting her first film, The Virgin Suicides, Coppola has spent a fair amount of time in hotels. So during the past two years of travel, she found herself concocting a romantic story about a pair of culturally alienated Americans knocking about in a hotel in Tokyo.

“I thought it would be funny to see Bill Murray in that context,” she recalls. When she arrived back home in Los Feliz from promoting The Virgin Suicides, Coppola spent six months writing Lost in Translation. “It’s about misunderstandings between people and places,” she says. “It’s about things being disconnected and looking for moments of connection. There are so many moments in life when people don’t say what they mean, when they are just missing each other, waiting to run into each other in a hallway.” She labored through the first 20 pages with support from her brother Roman, also a director (CQ), and then returned to Tokyo for further inspiration. “It helped to remember what I had liked,” she says. “I always loved the Park Hyatt. I wanted to shoot a movie in that hotel. I like the way you keep running into the same people over and over again, the camaraderie of foreigners.” In Lost in Translation, 20ish Charlotte, whose photographer husband is on a job, keeps running into Bob, a 50ish movie star who is in town to shoot a whiskey commercial. They are both lost and vulnerable, and despite their age gap, they bond in a romantic — though not sexual — way.

Coppola says she was inspired by the dynamic between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in Howard Hawks’s classic noir, The Big Sleep. “I wanted the movie’s structure to have all the different parts of a relationship condensed in a few days,” she explains. “They meet, they break up.” Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. Precisely observed and with a luxuriously languid pace, Lost in Translation captures the loneliness of a young wife seeking her identity, the loneliness of a married man in midlife crisis and the way two strangers can come together to supply something that is missing in each of them. As a director, Coppola takes the time to observe tiny real-life details; remarkably, in this music-video age, she lets the movie breathe. Once Coppola finished her script, she and her ICM agent, Bart Walker, decided to seek financing for the film “Jim Jarmusch– style.” In this model, the filmmaker licenses distribution rights in various overseas territories individually, cobbling together enough foreign presales to make the film without the controlling influence of a single territory or U.S. domestic distributor. “I didn’t want to make something I’d have to change,” Coppola remarks.

“I had an idea of what I wanted to make, and I wanted to not have a boss. It’s hard to get final cut, but it was very important to me to have the freedom to do [the film] the way I wanted.” The problem with the Jarmusch method, though, is that few American filmmakers possess the international appeal to completely finance their films from foreign distributors. And typically these distributors are more comfortable financing an American indie knowing that a U.S. distributor is also on board to launch the film in North America. And then there was one other problem: Coppola’s script was only 70 pages long, causing some potential financiers to worry that the finished film would not be feature-length. So, rather than shop a sparse script to the usual suspects in the U.S., the filmmakers went first to Japan, where The Virgin Suicides was a crossover hit. The film’s success there enabled the filmmakers to start in what would be their production home base on terms more advantageous than those customarily granted a U.S. indie.

Theatrical distributor Tohokushinsa prebought the territory and then, with producer Ross Katz reassuring everyone that the film would time out at 90 minutes (“Something that is half a page in the script — Charlotte walks alone in Kyoto — is a four-minute sequence,” Katz would explain), the French distributor Pathe boarded the project. At this point, the team entered discussions with Focus International hoping the foreign sales company would commit to selling the rest of the world and close the gap on the $4- million budget. To convince Focus of the film’s appeal, the filmmakers closed one additional territory by selling Italian rights themselves to Mikado. Focus then committed to the remainder of the financing, and when Coppola finished her first cut, the domestic releasing arm, Focus Features, bought the U.S. rights as well. From the start, Coppola had her heart set on Bill Murray for her lead. “Sofia wrote the movie for Bill,” Katz says. “She wasn’t going to make it if he didn’t do it.” But there were two problems. First, the film couldn’t afford to pay Murray anywhere near his Hollywood quote. And second, Murray is notorious for being hard to reach and pin down.

“It’s almost like a challenge to get through all the obstacles when someone tells me I can’t do something,” Coppola says. “It makes me try even harder. For five months it was like a full-time job, contacting Bill Murray.” A mutual friend, screenwriter Mitch Glazer, encouraged Coppola and showed Murray her treatment early on. “And he helped me with my stalking,” she says. “Bill had all these big movies that were offered to him. It was this long-shot thing: Was he going to do this little movie for no money? It would have been definitely heart-rending if he didn’t want to do it.” SOFIA COPPOLA'S TOP TEN FILMS Lolita  The Piano  Rumble Fish  Safe  Tootsie Click on a title to purchase it from Amazon.com. Murray finally indicated that he was interested in playing the lead. Coppola got a cell phone call one night asking her to join Murray at a downtown New York restaurant where he was dining with friends. In her sole meeting with the actor, she spent five hours with Murray, connecting with him but barely discussing the film.

But even though Murray said he was prepared to play the lead, the production was unable to obtain a signed contract from him before production. For an international production stitching together three foreign distributors, one U.S. sales company, a completion bond company and the French bank Natexis, not having your lead actor “signed” was yet another obstacle. But director Wes Anderson, who worked with Murray in Rushmore, told Coppola, “If he says he’s going to do it, he’ll show up.” So, with cash flow from trusting Tohokushinsa, Coppola and Katz spent $1 million in preproduction costs without knowing for sure that Murray was going to arrive on set. “It was nerve-wracking,” Coppola says. Finally, one week before filming, she received a call from Katz, who had just greeted Murray at the airport: “The Eagle has landed!” Any worries about Murray evaporated once shooting started. “Bill was such a good sport about it,” she recounts. “He was sweet. He said, ‘I thought if you were going to put yourself on the line, I would too.’ ” In the film he gives a devastating performance, both hilarious and tragic, that could wind up earning him an Oscar nomination.

To play her younger alter ego, Charlotte, the lonely tourist left alone by her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi), Coppola cast Ghost World’s Scarlett Johansson, who turned 18 during the shoot and bears a striking resemblance to her director. Coppola admits that she’s embarrassed by how much she and Johansson look alike. “It’s narcissistic. I relate to her. I liked her demeanor; she’s understated, not extroverted and hyper. There’s a part of me in that character. She’s in her early 20s, having a breakdown, like the girl Franny in Franny and Zooey. It’s a culmination of different stages of my life in that character.” “You can see the film is very personal,” Johansson adds. “Sofia bleeds through the character — her ironic sense of humor, that feeling of being lost and disillusioned and trying to figure out what direction you want to take with your life.” For the shoot, Coppola arrived in Tokyo loaded down with maps, blueprints, sketches, snapshots (she is an accomplished photographer) and an iPod, ready to communicate what she was looking for. “She knew the movie upside down and backward,” Katz comments.

“She spilled it right from her head onto the screen.” Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. Those references included music like the dreamy noise-pop of the Irish band My Bloody Valentine (whose reclusive leader, Kevin Shields, wound up contributing four songs to the film’s soundtrack) as well as some of Coppola’s favorite films. Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love “has the feeling of being on the verge of something happening,” Coppola says. She admires the way director Bob Fosse reveals his personal life in All That Jazz. “I enjoy movies when they’re sincere, from personal experience. Fosse got away with his girlfriend playing his girlfriend. It’s not an all-romanticized idea of himself. It’s honest.” And though Antonioni’s L’Avventura “has no plot, it isn’t boring. I like taking your time meandering with the music. There’s so much that isn’t said in a look. I like observing things. I’m not interested in a lot of dialogue.” Because the script was so spare, there was room for spontaneous maneuvering. “A lot of dialogue was added at the spur of the moment,” Johansson remembers.

“She allowed us to improvise, and she’d pull some ideas, lines, deliveries, movements; silly things like, I’d come in my slippers and she’d say, ‘Oh, you should put those on.’ She was perceptive while we were rehearsing.” Much of the movie was shot Dogme- style. Ironically, Coppola discovered that it was easier to “run and gun” in a foreign country, where the laissez-faire attitude of the Japanese toward location shooting made things easy. In fact, it was the Americans who asked the Japanese to supply paperwork for every extra and location. With a handheld Aaton camera, the filmmakers made impromptu forays onto subway trains and teeming Tokyo streets, where the Japanese reluctance to make eye contact was a plus. And during the shoot, Coppola’s brother Roman grabbed second-unit shots of blurry neon around the city. Although there was initial pressure to shoot on less expensive video, Coppola opted, somewhat sentimentally, to shoot on film instead. Her videophile father, Francis Ford Coppola, had told her, “You might as well shoot film.

It’s not going to be around very much longer,” and Coppola herself thought film would help to evoke a “fragmented, dislocated, melancholic, romantic feeling. [Lost in Translation] is the memory of an enchanted few days. Video feels more immediate, in the present.” HOW THEY DID IT Color Correction Process Conventional film answer printing. While cinematographer Ed Lachman filmed The Virgin Suicides with formal, locked-down, voyeuristic cameras, Lance Acord (who had shot Coppola’s first short and knew Tokyo well) photographed Lost in Translation on the run, blending off-the-cuff shots of Tokyo streets or hotel window views with intimate close-ups of the characters. Some scenes were almost entirely improvised, like one in a glass karaoke booth, where Coppola staged a party-like atmosphere with friends singing along to pop songs that she would try to clear later. She asked Murray to sing Roxy Music’s “More Than This,” setting up a delicious musical in-joke as Murray visibly reacts to having to grasp for the impossible high note that Bryan Ferry hits in the song’s opening line. On another day, Coppola reversed the usual movie protocol of heading to an indoor “cover set” in bad weather.

As a hazy rain made the city foggy and atmospheric, Coppola scrapped the interior she was shooting to grab a sequence with Charlotte walking outdoors. “In the course of 15 minutes we broke our plan and shot exteriors in the rain,” Katz says. “We shot Scarlett walking through the Shibuya with hundreds of translucent umbrellas, steam coming off the rooftops and the noodle shops. Afterward we had to deal with losing a location, but it was worth it.” For the production, Katz blended American key crew members — a U.S. line producer, production designer, costume designer, d.p., sound recordist and a New York–based Japanese a.d. — with Japanese seconds and thirds. The a.d. translated for the Japanese crew, but some cultural differences weren’t so easily glossed over. “Respect and honor are central to Japanese culture,” Coppola notes. “We wanted to do [the movie] more Japanese-style, not walk in and say, ‘Well this is how we do it in America.’ “However, when we were at the shabu-shabu restaurant, we were only permitted to shoot till 4 p.m.,” she continues.

“We went about 10 or 15 minutes over, and the owner pulled the plug — pulled the lights out. We were disrespecting the owner because we weren’t done.” Coppola finished the take in the dark (and printed it too). But as they wrapped, the film’s location manager resigned. “We had caused him to lose face with the owner,” Katz says. In the end, Coppola had both the confidence and flexibility to immerse herself deep in a foreign culture and figure out how to blend the best of the American and Japanese styles of filmmaking. And her Tokyo filmmaking adventure made the 32-year-old director even surer about what she’s doing with her life. “I can’t imagine,” she says, “doing anything else that could be as much fun.” Park Hyatt Tokyo Reviews - TripExpert A small hotel by Tokyo standards—only 177 rooms—the Park Hyatt fairly drips with luxury. Condé Nast Traveler 87.6 A swimming pool, a bamboo garden, and a restaurant occupy the three pyramidal atriums that crown the towers of this Shinjuku property.

Full Review → DK Eyewitness Remember the grandstand views Scarlett Johansson looked out on from her room at this hotel in the movie Lost in Translation? Fodor's Choice Sofia Coppola's classic film Lost in Translation was a love letter to this hotel... you may feel smitten as well. Full Review → Forbes Travel Guide Park Hyatt Tokyo, made famous in Sophia Coppola’s hit indie flick Lost in Translation, has been a luxurious mainstay for international travelers for more than 20 years. Located in the... Full Review → Frommer's Among the most gorgeous and sophisticated hotels in Japan, a perfect reflection of high-tech, avant-garde Tokyo in the 21st century. If you can afford it, stay here. Full Review → Be sure to book early, therefore, for the 52nd-floor New York Grill, one of Tokyo's best restaurants, offering a spectacular setting. Lonely Planet Top Choice The service here is gracious and above all accommodating; perks for guests include complimentary mobile phone rentals. Full Review → Michelin Guide All the guest rooms are decorated in tones of beige and green, with comfort taking priority over extravagance.

Full Review → Rough Guide Lost in translation at Park Hyatt Hotel Tokyo -The Go Fever Hotels , Japan October 26, 2014 Lost in translation at Park Hyatt Hotel Tokyo The Park Hyatt hotel in Tokyo is the stuff that dreams are made of. Stepping into the hotel is just like walking into a film. No wonder Sofia Coppola chose it as the décor of her 2003 movie, Lost in Translation. The space is dramatically grandiose, and oozes chic from every corner. Not the clinquant/glitzy kind; chic, here, manifests itself in the form of noble materials and earthy tones. Hushed voices, soft ambiance, grand spaces… And that wonderful, wonderful New York Bar, where Scarlett and Bill could be sitting, having cocktails. Located at the 52nd floor of the Park Tower building in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, it offers an ideal view over the tentacular city.

Mandatory reflection selfie Lost In Translation's Tokyo: Park Hyatt Tokyo - Journal - I Want To Be A Coppola I Want To Be A Coppola Kellina de Boer I Want To Be An Alt I Want To Be A Battaglia I Want To Be A Roitfeld By Philippe Garner, Claire Wilcox, Robin Muir By Jamel Shabazz, Fab 5 Freddy, Ernie Paniccioli By Dennis Freedman, Philip-Lorca diCorcia Lost In Translation's Tokyo: Park Hyatt Tokyo mardi 25 octobre 2011 I am elated to share with you a new series on I Want To Be A Coppola — Lost In Translation's Tokyo in which our delightful editor-at-large Vivian Morelli offers her personal observations as she discovers the parts of the city that Sofia Coppola chose to provide the atmosphere of her film. Lost In Translation inspired Vivian to uproot her life and move across the world to Japan, I cannot imagine more passionate eyes through which to take in the sights of Tokyo... どうもありがとうございました Dōmo arigatō Vivian! 愛 Ai!

Lost In Translation's Tokyo: Park Hyatt Tokyo By Vivian Morelli After years spent fantasizing and obsessing over every detail in Lost in Translation, I am now officially a Tokyo resident and watching my favorite movie over and over finally paid off — who would have thought... This series of articles, Lost In Translation's Tokyo, will aim to introduce the different neighborhoods and landmarks that were featured in the film. I'm having such a lovely time exploring Sofia's Tokyo, all these locations she picked, and I'm excited to share them here. Park Hyatt Tokyo Most of the film takes place in the (now) iconic Park Hyatt Tokyo, located in the lively area of Shinjuku, which is the downtown core of Tokyo and the busiest district. The hotel is modern, stylish, and elegant, with very typical Japanese touches: sleek, minimalist design, wooden Hokkaido elm paneling, and open spaces. I was surprised to find out that the hotel is a little bit out of the way, approximately a fifteen-minute walk from Shinjuku station, tucked deep into the financial district. Then again, if you can afford to spend a few nights at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, you can certainly afford an unlimited amount of taxis to go around.

In the movie, the characters have different types of rooms: Bill Murray's character has a luxurious suite, while Scarlett's character and her husband share a more simple Diplomat's suite, which is still just as gorgeous. Personally, my favorite moment in the movie is when Charlotte is just sitting on the window sill and gazing at the madness that is Tokyo — I feel like this is the most symbolic Lost in Translation moment. I had the chance to visit the Park Hyatt and enjoy swanky cocktails while overlooking Tokyo's skyline, and I could not get that moment out of my head. The Park Hyatt Tokyo actually offers lots of options for dining and entertainment, as well as a gym and the beautiful swimming pool. The characters can be seen swimming in the hotel's impressive sky pool, which is located on the 47th floor, and with floor to ceiling windows, taking in the views of Tokyo. Yet, the most spectacular view and atmosphere is to be found on the 52nd floor, at the stunning New York Bar where many key scenes were filmed. The New York Bar is everything Lost in Translation: posh, luxurious, and glamourous... but it comes with the price tag.

There is a basic seating charge of ¥2,200, and the price of each cocktail is enough to give me a mini heart attack when I look at the menu. Still, I'd highly suggest splurging on a night out at the Park Hyatt Tokyo, if only for the view. The New York Bar offers an amazing selection of wine and whisky (not only Suntory), and the customer service and attention to detail is impeccable. It all comes with beautiful singing and jazz performances, in a cozy orange glow. Of course, the beverage of choice would be Suntory Whisky, but I'm more of a fan of the L.I.T. myself (which obviously stands for the film's initials): sake, sakura liqueur, and peachtree. I think that's what Sofia would drink...

Read more in the series: Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo – Visiting Japan Address: 3-7-1-2 Nishi Shinjuku, Tokyo, 163-1055, Japan Phone: +81 3 5322 1234 The Park Hyatt Hotel, which was made famous by Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost in Translation, is one of the best hotels in Tokyo. Not located in the most convenient location in Tokyo, the Park Hyatt Hotel more than makes up for its out of the way premises by being an ultra luxury hotel. Guest rooms at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo are decorated with neutral colors and clean lines, with stark white linens and luxury amenities. Rooms on higher floors have amazing views over Tokyo and all the way to Mount Fuji. The Park Hyatt hotel features a swimming pool and gym on the top floor. Guests can enjoy panoramic views through the expansive windows while they work on getting fit. The lobby area and lounges at the Park Hyatt are elegantly decorated and the restaurants and bars serve great local and international food and cocktails.

The 52nd floor New York Grill is worth a visit for the city skyline views alone, but do stay for the food. Room rates at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo start at 48200 yen per night (around 525 USD). The hotel offers special deals and discounts throughout the year, so room rates are often lower. Hotels I Love: Park Hyatt Tokyo, Japan Hotels I Love: Park Hyatt Tokyo, Japan {{article.article.images.featured.caption}} Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. Full Bio The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. Loading ... Loading ... This story appears in the {{article.article.magazine.pretty_date}} issue of {{article.article.magazine.pubName}}. Subscribe If you saw the most famous movie ever made about Japanese whisky, Lost In Translation, you already know the Park Hyatt Tokyo - it is inseparable from the film, about half of which is set inside the hotel. Amazingly, the owners balked at the concept, and director Sofia Coppola and her cast ended up shooting scenes in their own rooms because they had no choice.

Public area scenes, including several set in the bar, had to be filmed after hours, so everyone from the fake jazz band to fake customers was fake. In hindsight, almost turning down the movie, which still brings the hotel plenty of business 10 years later, seems like a bad idea. But the reason they did it is a very good idea - they didn’t want to bother their guests. The very notion of caring more about hotel guests - whoever they are - than celebrities would be unheard of in most of LA and most of the world, and that alone is a good reason to consider the Park Hyatt a Hotel I Love. But there are many more - it’s worth adding that the reason Coppola didn’t go someplace accommodating was because she had stayed here and liked the hotel. There’s a lot to like. For readers unfamiliar with this recurring column, here is the three sentence lowdown: I travel a great deal and stay in many exceptional hotels worldwide, but only the very best make the cut for Hotels I Love. In almost every case these are properties I have visited multiple times over a period of years, so I know great service was not a fluke.

It’s not “Hotels I Like,” or even “Hotels I Really Like,” and I only manage to find a few each year that qualify - they have to be that good. Because it occupies the top 14 floors of a Shinjuku skyscraper, the views from all over the Park Hyatt Tokyo are fantastic. This is the Peak Lounge, one of the hotel bars. I’ve stayed at the Park Hyatt Tokyo on three different occasions over the past 17 years, most recently just a few months ago, so I have a pretty good feeling for how it has matured, though in the big picture little has changed. It has always been at the technological forefront - the first time I stayed here, it was the only hotel I’d seen with LaserDisc players in the room, and a loaner library. I couldn’t sleep due to the time difference, so on my first night I called down and had the concierge send up a copy of Terminator.

“Cutting edge” LaserDisc has since gone the way of the DoDo, but that has not stopped the hotel from continuing to employ the best available technology and amenities in its rooms, from wet bars to high-end coffee makers to flat screens in the bathrooms to yukata (cotton Japanese robes often erroneously called kimonos). LaserDisc has been replaced by DVD players, high speed WiFi is always free, and rooms include free shoeshine, 24-hour room service and loaner Japanese mobile phones, which is really helpful since many “international” phones don’t work here. And those amenities are standard for the cheapest rooms. It’s become common now, especially throughout Asia, but the Park Hyatt Tokyo was one of the first hotels set within an office building tower, on the higher floors, so you take an express elevator to the 41th floor lobby, and rooms and facilities go up 14 stories from there. The result of this is stunning views and great cityscapes at any time, and you can also enjoy (on an admittedly rare clear day in Tokyo) views of Mt Fuji while running on the treadmill in the gym. A guest room at the Park Hyatt Tokyo.

Tokyo has several hotels with excellent white glove service, which is almost inseparable from Japanese culture, and the Park Hyatt is among the elite in this regards. But these are the differentiators that really set the hotel apart: - It’s location in Shinjuku, near the world’s busiest train and subway station (I walked, 10 minutes, but there’s a free hotel shuttle) makes it easy to get anywhere in the city (or anywhere in Japan). But often you don’t have to go anywhere, since Shinjuku is both a business and nightlife epicenter of Tokyo. - The spa, Club on the Park, is unbeatable. Bill Murray famously swam laps in the gorgeous signature pool and lounged in one of the hot baths in Lost In Translation but it also has state of the art fitness facilities with tremendous views, locker rooms (separate for men and women) with steam rooms, multiple saunas (different temperatures) and whirlpool baths. For an urban hotel spa, it is top of the class - anywhere in the world.

- Food & Beverage: The New York Bar, the spot made famous in the movie, still gets sightseers every single day as a result, but it is just a great hotel bar, with live jazz many nights, incredible views and excellent cocktails, including one of the largest selections of Japanese whiskies in the city (for the record, many visitors ask for “what Bill Murray had.” He drank Hibiki 17-year old, an excellent blend that is Japan’s equivalent of Johnnie Walker Blue, so expect it to set you back at least $30 a glass. You can read much more about Japan’s excellent whiskies, which are really hot right now, here at Forbes.com ). The attached New York Grill specializes in meat, but despite its name, has a broad selection of exceptional Japanese beef, which regular Great Life readers know is virtually non-existent in the US ( despite lies about Kobe beef on so many menus ). The Peak Bar is a fun and more casual watering hole and the hotel has several other dining options, from formal Japanese to Continental. - The Building: Beneath the skyscraper that contains the hotel is a multi-level, higher end shopping mall.

It’s not big, but it has a fairly impressive variety of restaurants, mostly upscale, all of which can be accessed without ever stepping outside, a definite fringe benefit. In Lost In Translation, Bill Murray famously relaxed in this bath, part of the world-class spa at the Park Hyatt Tokyo. I’ve said it before and I will say it again: Park Hyatt is one of the world’s underrated luxury hotel brands, mainly because the Hyatt name covers everything from pedestrian airport hotels to luxury hotels like this one, an issue brands like Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton and Peninsula don’t suffer from. Nonetheless, Park Hyatt holds its own, and at least until the new flagship property in New York opens this year ( see my piece on the biggest new hotels of 2014 ), Tokyo remains the global spokesman for the brand, and it speaks well. Alice Marshall Public Relations • Park Hyatt Tokyo Visit Napa Valley Park Hyatt Tokyo Occupying the top 14 floors of the 52-story Shinjuku Park Tower, Park Hyatt Tokyo is known for its service, amenities, and exemplary attention to detail.

As shown in the 2003 Sofia Coppola film Lost in Translation, it offers the largest guestrooms in Tokyo, seven restaurants and bars and the 22,000 square-foot Club on the Park spa and fitness center. Ideally located in the Shinjuku district, it is close to the city’s best shopping, entertainment, restaurants, galleries, parks and museums, such as Takashimaya Times Square, Shinjuku Gyoen, and the New National Theatre. Park Hyatt Tokyo | Architectural Digest Architectural Digest More Than a Setting for Lost in Translation the Hotel Asserts its International Appeal Text by View Slideshow John Morford, interior designer of the Park Hyatt Tokyo, a hotel made famous as the setting for Lost in Translation, wants everybody to know that he really, really disliked the film. Never mind that director Sofia Coppola won a 2003 Oscar for best original screenplay or that Scarlett Johansson instantly became America's sweetheart or that Bill Murray's midlife crisis was one of his most memorable performances. "The movie was so Hollywood," says Morford, of Hong Kong–based Morford Company, who collaborated on the project with Japan's legendary architect Kenzo Tange, of Tokyo-based Tange Associates.

"It went against the grain of what the Park Hyatt was supposed to be—an international hotel." Maybe most viewers could not keep their eyes off Johansson lolling around her suite. But Morford cringed at the "japanesque lamps and other clichés" introduced by set designers into the worldly décor of fine wood armoires and down duvets he created for the guest rooms. This man is a perfectionist with an obsession for details, small and large. If he walks through the hotel's 2,000-tome library, says an associate, and sees a book missing or "out of place . . . well, you get my point!" Others may be wowed by the views of Mount Fuji from the pool atrium and fitness center on the 47th floor. But Morford wants swimmers to be aware that in case of a severe temblor in this earthquake-prone country, the massive windows surrounding them are designed to withstand the impact of the water being displaced from the 65-foot-long pool.

The 178–guest room hotel occupies the top 14 floors of a 52-story, three-towered skyscraper built on the nearly quakeproof bedrock of Shinjuku, a major business and entertainment district. "The Park Hyatt benefited terrifically from being on top of an office complex because the structural grid is much larger than in a purpose-designed hotel building," says Morford. This made it possible to have unusually generous guest accommodations, with standard rooms averaging about 600 square feet. The feeling of spaciousness is immediately evoked when guests step out of the elevators into the newly redesigned 41st-floor Peak Lounge, where tea, coffee and desserts are served in a skylighted bamboo garden. Beyond the towering lounge is an open, spiral stair leading to a three-story space occupied by Girandole, a French-style brasserie crowned by a collage of faces photographed in European cafés. Morford describes this restaurant as "the heart of the hotel" because its sophisticated, multinational allure embodies the theme that Tange and he were asked to create by the owners, Tokyo Gas Co., when the Park Hyatt Tokyo was first conceived in the late 1980s.

Past Girandole, the internationalist theme continues in the nearby library, with volumes from a dozen countries and in a variety of languages. Next stop is the atmospheric New York Grill and its adjoining bar, where in the film the jet-lagged Johansson and Murray battled insomnia while listening to a sad-sack torch singer. Incredibly, it is only after this long, entertaining walk through the Park Hyatt Tokyo's main public spaces that guests finally reach the reception area. Because it is off-limits to outsiders, the reception is smaller and more intimate than in other hotels, where check-in services are conventionally located in a sprawling lobby near the street-level entrance. Here, concierge and clerks sit with guests around desks, as if a loan were being discreetly discussed. The newly reupholstered chairs and custom carpets are in warm, welcoming gold tones. The Presidential Suite is supposed to be as cozy as it is grand. Its main theme is gardens, with lush plants in alcoves and a central painting of stones from an ancient Chinese garden. The suite is also intended to evoke an at-home feeling. When Billy Joel stayed there not too long ago, he more than once took advantage of the kitchen to cook for himself.

Though Morford tends to lodge in less spectacular quarters, he says even the more typical guest rooms—with freestanding marble tubs, walk-in closets and outsize plasma television sets—are ample and luxurious enough to almost dissuade him from venturing outside the hotel. And surely the Johansson and Murray characters in Lost in Translation felt just that way. "I guess they were just having so much fun," says Morford, making it sound like a concession extracted under duress. Explore Lost in Translation (2003) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A faded movie star and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo.

Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 41 titles created 22 Aug 2012 a list of 31 titles created 13 Oct 2014 a list of 39 titles created 24 Aug 2015 a list of 40 titles created 11 months ago a list of 33 titles created 9 months ago Title: Lost in Translation (2003) 7.8/10 Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 1 Oscar. Another 93 wins & 118 nominations. See more awards » Videos A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus. Directors: Jonathan Dayton, Valerie Faris Stars: Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear A pair of young lovers flee their New England town, which causes a local search party to fan out to find them.

Director: Wes Anderson An estranged family of former child prodigies reunites when their father announces he is terminally ill. Director: Wes Anderson A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents in suburban Detroit in the mid-1970s. Director: Sofia Coppola Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child. Director: Jason Reitman A year after their father's funeral, three brothers travel across India by train in an attempt to bond with each other. Director: Wes Anderson 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 6.4/10 X The retelling of France's iconic but ill-fated queen, Marie Antoinette. From her betrothal and marriage to Louis XVI at 15 to her reign as queen at 19 and to the end of her reign as queen and ultimately the fall of Versailles. Director: Sofia Coppola While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s everyday at midnight.

Director: Woody Allen A committed dancer wins the lead role in a production of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" only to find herself struggling to maintain her sanity. Director: Darren Aronofsky Two girlfriends on a summer holiday in Spain become enamored with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture. Director: Woody Allen A lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need. Director: Spike Jonze With a plan to exact revenge on a mythical shark that killed his partner, oceanographer Steve Zissou rallies a crew that includes his estranged wife, a journalist, and a man who may or may not be his son. Director: Wes Anderson Edit Storyline Middle-aged American movie star Bob Harris is in Tokyo to film a personal endorsement Suntory whiskey ad solely for the Japanese market. He is past his movie star prime, but his name and image still have enough cachet for him to have gotten this lucrative $2 million job.

He has an unsatisfying home life where his wife Lydia follows him wherever he goes - in the form of messages and faxes - for him to deal with the minutiae of their everyday lives, while she stays at home to look after their kids. Staying at the same upscale hotel is fellow American, twenty-something recent Yale Philosophy graduate Charlotte, her husband John, an entertainment still photographer, who is on assignment in Japan. As such, she is largely left to her own devices in the city, especially when his job takes him out of Tokyo. Both Bob and Charlotte are feeling lost by their current situations, which are not helped by the cultural barriers they feel in Tokyo, those cultural barriers extending far beyond just not... Written by Huggo Everyone wants to be found. See more » Genres: Rated R for some sexual content | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 3 October 2003 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Perdidos en Tokio See more » Filming Locations: $925,087 (USA) (12 September 2003) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia Bob is asked to channel Roger Moore for his photo shoot.

Later, we see a karaoke performance of "Nobody Does It Better", the theme to one of Moore's own Bond movies, The Spy Who Loved Me. See more » Goofs When Bob lies alone near the beginning of the movie (just before he gets a fax), the clock reads 4:20 in a close-up shot. At the end of the following long-distance shot, the clock is blurry, but clearly changes (probably to 4:21). In the following shots, it's back to 4:20. See more » Quotes Ms. Kawasaki : Welcome to Tokyo. Bob : Thank you very much. Ms. Kawasaki : My name is Kawasaki. Nice to meet you. Bob : I've heard of you. Thank you. See more » Crazy Credits At the end of the closing credits, Hiromix ( Hiromi Toshikawa ), seen throughout most of the party sequence, waves to the camera. See more » Connections This FAQ is empty. Add the first question. User Reviews Filmed in Tokyo, with Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson, one of the better movies I've seen in a while.

7 February 2004 | by TxMike (Houston, Tx, USA, Earth) – See all my reviews For anyone who wants a synopsis of this movie, the critics Ebert and Berardinelli have excellent, complete reviews of 'Lost in Translation', and they both give it their highest ratings. My wife and I saw it tonight on DVD, with DTS 5.1 sound and both think it is a remarkable movie. I like Bill Murray in just about everything, and this will go down as one of his strongest performances, as Bob, the actor in Japan for a week doing whisky commercials. Scarlett Johansson plays Charlotte, the young wife virtually abandoned in the city to do her own thing as her photographer husband (Ribisi) goes to various locations for shoots. What I liked most was the realistic feel. Being in a strange city, with unusual customs and a language you have no hope of understanding. Meeting someone who because of circumstances (age, marital status) will only ever be a friend. Being able to talk freely. Reflecting on where we've been and where we might be going.

Many of the negative comments about this movie relate to an impression that it is 'boring.' I'll put on my 'maturity hat' and state that anyone who thinks 'Lost In Translation' is boring simply was not able, at least while they watched it, appreciate the inner beauty of this movie. The scene that made the whole story come together for me was when they were in one of their hotel rooms (doesn't matter which), overhead shot, they were in bed talking, fully clothed, he is on his back staring at the ceiling, she is on her side, eyes probably closed, the tips of her feet barely touching the side of his leg, and he moves his hand and puts it on her feet. Then the scene fades to black. It is the kind of tender, non-sexual touch that tells us how close they have become, and that theirs is a relationship of mutual trust and admiration, not one of lust. People like Bob and Charlotte really exist, and they really do meet up in very similar situations. After a week, they must go their separate ways, he to his family and activities of his kids, she to wait for her husband and figure out how to get out of the rut.

We sense that he does not love her they way she needs, and we wonder what will happen. 259 of 358 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Tokyo – Visiting Japan Address: 3-7-1-2 Nishi Shinjuku, Tokyo, 163-1055, Japan Phone: +81 3 5322 1234 The Park Hyatt Hotel, which was made famous by Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film Lost in Translation, is one of the best hotels in Tokyo. Not located in the most convenient location in Tokyo, the Park Hyatt Hotel more than makes up for its out of the way premises by being an ultra luxury hotel. Guest rooms at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo are decorated with neutral colors and clean lines, with stark white linens and luxury amenities. Rooms on higher floors have amazing views over Tokyo and all the way to Mount Fuji. The Park Hyatt hotel features a swimming pool and gym on the top floor. Guests can enjoy panoramic views through the expansive windows while they work on getting fit.

The lobby area and lounges at the Park Hyatt are elegantly decorated and the restaurants and bars serve great local and international food and cocktails. The 52nd floor New York Grill is worth a visit for the city skyline views alone, but do stay for the food. Room rates at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Tokyo start at 48200 yen per night (around 525 USD). The hotel offers special deals and discounts throughout the year, so room rates are often lower. Google Maps Tokyo Google Maps offers maps of the Japanese city of Tokyo. Google has maps of Japan and all of Asia inside Google Maps. These include road and street maps of major cities like Tokyo. You can check out a Google map of Tokyo below.

Question: Which 2003 Sofia Coppola film is set in the Park Hyatt Hotel, Tokyo?
Answer: Lost in Translation